Becoming a Seasoned Investor

5

It's been only six years since I started began foolish investing and so far I still have a lot to learn. Let me tell you I did not attend or receive a degree from a prestige business school. What I have learned has been self taught extremely hard with losses amounting to tens of thousands. The only comfort I can take away from that is I learned and that it is still only a 1/2 semester of a prestige semester at one of the before mentioned types of universities. Along with that I am finally on track to earning those losses back and finally be in profit. My seasonings now are:

DON"T invest in stocks or companies based on their one day movements.

DO NOT invest in ANY ULTRA or PRO type shares. (Huge losses here).

DO NOT play with shorting ANY company. For no reason you can fathom they will rise and you will be left broken under Margin. (Been there it left a foul taste) ie. HLF, ANGI.

DO NOT invest in a company with bad future outlook even if it shows short term investment return in stock value, because that company has not shown real value versus stock value. (JCP, BKS, BBY). JCP is the only company I see that might make it but not without closing loss leader stores which they can't due to covenants.

DO NOT Diversify too much. You return will either be dismal, a loss, or just be in stagnation.

DO NOT speculate too much, pick only one to two companies that are well recognized, well known, are offering tremendous possibility while they would still hold your current entry point and continue on to growth with real value. (TSLA, P) (I myself have taken my TSLA profits after a gain of 100% in less than a week which came as a major great surprise.)

DO find a investment partner, a club, a community such as this, and a friend who you can invest along, talk, listen, learn, gain in profits along with.

DO follow a Top Fool here but DO NOT invest in RLP just because "he/she" did:

DO invest only in a handful of companies that are sound, well recognized/known, have the potential for future growth in value WHILE at the same time it will hold your current entry point. (GS, JPM, GOOG, SNE, YHOO)

DO use Margin for leverage only in GREAT COMPANIES that show a very little margin hold requirement. (GS, JPM, GOOG, SNE)

I an seeing a path to enlightenment which means sticking to my own methodology listed here, it tastes really great. I will never stop learning but I learned this much so far and now try extremely hard to learn from other people's mistakes or great teachings left by the Foolish community here. I hope you Fools among us can leave what you learned here no matter how foolish an embarrassing lesson or an exemplary accomplishment it is for us all to learn to trade better. This post is meant to help not hinder.